‘Week Without Violence’ promoting violence free world

One local organization in our community is promoting a violence free world. The YWCA is organizing a week-long series of events called Week Without Violence to help groups who are sometimes forgotten. On Tuesday chalk messages were written on the street by the Penny Coffee House in Downtown Lethbridge. YWCA staff say there are a variety of well wishes for those who have been victims of violence.

“Ideally, the whole purpose is to put messages of awareness that have to do with family violence and domestic violence. So we’ve got a few things. We’ve got an example of our crisis line there. We’ve got some talking about survivors. We’ve got messages about, you know, not judging people on what their past is and just including everyone and everything. So it was really up to the individual person that was doing the chalk what they felt was important for people to know. And having staff that are involved in different facets of the organization and deal with different clients, that’s probably a message that they hear from clients on a regular basis. Like, people don’t believe me. It’s become who I am. And just making people aware that that’s not what it is. And we just need to be more aware of family and domestic violence in general,” says the external director for the YWCA Cat Champagne.

On Friday the YWCA will host an event called Take Back the Night at City Hall at 6pm. It will help to promote safety for women when they are walking alone.